Jim Carrey used to be my childhood hero. I saw Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in theatres three times, and for at least a year I found myself (annoyingly) rattling off quotations from the movie toward anyone who would listen to me. Over the years I fell in love with his performances in The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Batman Forever, and Liar, Liar. Then in 1998 he delivered a magnificent performance in one of my all-time favorite films The Truman Show, definitely still Carrey’s highpoint. He hit his first big skids with lame movies like Me, Myself, and Irene, The Grinch, and The Majestic, but he bounced back with the memorable and daring romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s been nearly five years and Carrey hasn’t come close to recapturing some of that magic. Here’s hoping for the best with the upcoming I Love You Philip Morris. Jim Carrey’s latest mainstream venture into broad comedy is, unfortunately, just like the cash cows Bruce Almighty and Fun with Dick and Jane, serviceable and forgettable. While the movie’s heart is certainly in the right place, and the concept actually lends itself to a great Carrey comedy, the laughs just don’t come fast and furious enough for us to care (more…)

When not one but two Kate Winslet movies come out over the course of two weeks, let’s just say that life is good. Really good. A day after Christmas, Winslet’s first teaming with Leonardo DiCaprio since Titanic opens in limited release. Revolutionary Road, another film about suburban angst from director Sam Mendes, has proven itself to be my most anticipated of the fall. Early word is great, so here’s hoping for another masterpiece from the American Beauty director. While I anxiously await that film, I got to already experience my first Winslet treat of December by watching the fascinating new Stephen Daldry film The Reader.

Taking place in post-WWII Germany, a 15-year-old student Michael (David Kross) begins an affair with a 36-year-old woman Hanna (Winslet) over the course of a few months. The two have sex, yes, but she also makes him read to her all the books he has to analyze for his classes. Promoted at her job, she abruptly leaves town and years go by with Michael moving on with his life. But he sees her again, years later (more…)

After walking out of the new remake of Robert Wise’s 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, I recognized that the film was not that memorable or exciting, and that I certainly wouldn’t be thinking about it in the days to come, but the actual experience watching it was one of great fun… until that awful climax. The first two-thirds of this remake is actually fairly competent, with an intriguing set-up, simple but nifty special effects, and a better-than-average cast consisting of Keanu Reeves, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, and the lovely Jennifer Connolly. This certainly could’ve been a lot worse. Considering that Keanu’s acting has never been exactly the best, casting him as an alien from another galaxy was a master stroke. And watching Bates, one of my all-time favorites, strut around as the Secretary of State, demanding orders from all those around here, was a guilty pleasure. But it’s Connolly who grounds the movie and really makes this kind of rubbish watchable. No matter what genre she appears in, Connolly makes the viewer believe in her character’s circumstances (more…)

Consider this the last of my classic film reviews. Since the summer of 2007, I’ve been looking at older movies, many of which I was embarrassed to not have seen, starting in 1919 with the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and making my way through the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s. 50’s, and 60’s, taking my first look at movies like The Invisible Man, Cat People, Out of the Past, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Singin in the Rain, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 12 Angry Men, and West Side Story. My greatest discoveries were Invisible Man, Singin in the Rain, and 12 Angry Men, but I for the most part enjoyed everything I looked at. Now here I am a year and a half later, with a lot more classic movies under my belt, and while my column for older films stops here, I have a lot more work ahead of me. I’m going to be looking at movies I’ve never seen all the way through the 90’s, and I’m also going to start a section on my Netflix queue for foreign movies I haven’t yet discovered. My knowledge of foreign cinema is pathetic, to be honest. The last year and a half has been about filling the gaps in basic movie knowledge. And the last big fat epic classic movie I’d never taken a look at was The Sound of Music (more…)

I came out of the closet when I was twenty-one years old. I remember the night well. I was spending the weekend at home in Reno during a school break, and I found myself eating dinner with my mom and dad on my last night before heading back to Los Angeles. I picked away at my food and made cheap small talk before my dad got up from the table and started walking toward his office to do some work. “Dad?” I asked. “Could I talk to you about something?” Before I knew it, my parents were both seated in front of me, staring into my eyes, my dad clearly confused, and my mom clearly knowing what I was about to reveal. I was shaking, crying, devastated. But looking back now, over two years later, it was one of the best things I ever could’ve done. My relationship with my family is better than it once was, and I feel more accepted and at peace with my sexuality than I ever did growing up. Watching the new movie Milk, directed by Gus Van Zant, I found myself re-visiting all those scary emotions I had in my early days, and the more positive emotions I feel now. This movie left me shaken and emotionally exhausted. I loved every second of it.

I’ve been excited for this movie for many months because mainstream cinema rarely delves into gay subject matter. Many films produced by the studios features gay characters here and there, but it wasn’t until the artistic and financial success of Brokeback Mountain in 2005 when studio heads could finally take notice that films about gay characters can be profitable, marketable, and enjoyable to a general audience. Three years went by and we didn’t see much in the way of gay films. As much fun as a movie like Another Gay Movie is, we yearned for storytelling on a giant scale, with fine actors and a talented director behind the camera. Gays rejoice! Milk is the movie we’ve been waiting for (more…)

I often tell people my favorite three months of the year are October, November, and December. I love these three months because it’s time of holidays, warm clothes, snow, pumpkin foods, and, most of all, great movies. Maybe I should start singling out December as my favorite month of the year, because the first two movies I’ve seen this month are two of the best I’ve seen all year. Gus Van Zant’s Milk, a new landmark in gay mainstream cinema, will be discussed in the next couple days. Today, I look at Ron Howard’s fascinating film version of the popular London stage play Frost / Nixon.

After the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s resignation of the Presidency, British talk show host David Frost got the idea of raising money to interview Nixon one on one for a news program that would get to the bottom of Nixon’s misappropriate behavior in office and finally give the American people a formal apology from Nixon himself. After agreeing to the interview for $600,000 (with $200,000 promised up front), Nixon sat down with Frost for a number of in-depth interviews. This film dramatizes those interviews, and the relationship the two men had in front of and behind the camera.

I’ve found throughout the years that while story is important and central conflict is extremely important, the movies that ring true and stay with me are the ones with complex, dynamic characters. Frost / Nixon offers looks at two men who couldn’t be more different from each other but at the same time have everything to lose (more…)

It took me two months to finally get around to seeing this one, and I wasn’t disappointed. All the buzz lately has pointed to Anne Hathaway giving one of the year’s breakthrough performances in this film, and she is nothing short of fascinating to watch in this. It’s rare for an actor to break free from a mold that we see he or she in. She was introduced to us in the early part of the decade in the two Princess Diaries films, and Hathaway could’ve easily stayed on the safe and easy path of Disney movies, maybe a PG-13 mainstream comedy here and there. But Hathaway took a different path, taking on movies like the terrible Havoc and the brilliant Brokeback Mountain. She became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, and she proved her mainstream drawing power further with last summer’s Get Smart and the surefire upcoming hit Bride Wars. But here, in Rachel Getting Married, we finally get to see her act, and it’s a tremendous performance. Playing a recovering drug addict, Hathaway could’ve gone for the jugular, over-playing every single moment, but she really keeps a fine hold on her performance (more…)

Mr. Phoenix, it was nice knowing you. In what apparently is Joaquin Phoenix’s final movie ever to be made (yeah, right), he plays a dork named Leonard who works for his dad and lives at home with both his parents. He finds a potential romantic mate in Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of one of his father’s friends, but he finds himself attracted to the woman in the apartment across the way Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow). James Gray, who just directed Phoenix to a terrific performance in We Own the Night last year, returns here with a confident and watchable, if unremarkable, drama that offers some great performances and memorable quiet moments. If this is the one Phoenix is going out on, it could be a lot worse. Phoenix fully captures the portrayal of a lonely man torn between what he wants to do and what he should do. While not exactly the most sympathetic leading man of the year, he always keeps the audience guessing as to what he’s going to do next (more…)

In Fall 2005, during a semester studying abroad in Dusseldorf, Germany, my European film history teacher Dr. Richard Hadley showed my class the first few minutes of a movie called The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Did we not have time to watch the whole thing? I don’t remember. These last three years I’ve always had the intention to rent the film and watch the full movie, because those few minutes definitely left an impact. After making its way up from place #151 or so to the top slot of my Netflix queue, the film finally arrived at my house. Let’s just say the rest of the movie was not disappointing in the least. Let me just say this. Le film est romantique, lyrique, et pres de perfectionner! A hush fell over everything in my life as I found myself absolutely transfixed for the ninety minutes that The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a French film directed by Jacques Demy, unfolded before my eyes. This movie is more than just a musical. It’s an all-music extravaganza. All the dialogue in the entire movie is sung, even the most casual of conversation. Questions like “how are you doing” and answers like “I’m okay” are made lyrical (more…)

Is it that typical for a director to get better with age? A director whose best films clearly appear toward the end of his life? When I think about the filmographies of all my favorite directors, it’s really never the case. Most of my favorite filmmakers, who are fairly old or dead by now, made their best films early on or mid-way through their careers, and rarely peaked toward the end. My favorite director Alfred Hitchcock worked from the mid 1920’s to the mid 1970’s, fifty years of cinema bliss. His finest films were definitely in his later half, with that golden time between 1951 and 1963.

But Hitchcock’s last four films are hit and miss, and maybe the least interesting of his entire career. There’s Spielberg, who made his best films in the 70’s, with some exceptions (including Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan). Billy Wilder? By far the first half of his career was better than his second. And my horror guys-Carpenter, Craven, Romero, and De Palma-have delivered nothing but mediocrity for the last decade. Only Cronenberg has had a late-career renaissance with A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. So it’s with great pleasure to report that Clint Eastwood’s finest work is coming at the end of his career (more…)